vBulletin 5.4.1 Alpha 4 is now available.

vBulletin 5.4.1 Alpha 4 is now available to licensed customers. This is a development release and should not be used in production environments.

[h2]Third-Party Authorization[h2]
The login/authorization system has been reworked to allow third-party logins beyond Facebook. This is a modular system and can be expanded via the Package system in vBulletin. This will allow sites to create custom authentication systems that fit the needs of their users. We've included Twitter OAuth as a working example of how to use the system. Users can connect their accounts to multiple third-party sites.

Twitter Authentication
vBulletin can now connect to Twitter's OAuth system to allow users to log in. Once configured in the AdminCP, you can allow users to log in to your site using Twitter. During the first login, if the user does not have a vBulletin account, they will be directed to the registration screen to create one. After that time the user can use their Twitter credentials to log into the system regularly.

Quick Twitter Configuration
This is a quick setup for configuring Twitter Login within vBulletin 5.4.1If you do not already have a twitter account, you need to create one. https://twitter.com
Create an app for your twitter account. https://apps.twitter.com/app/newFill in the &quot;Name&quot;, &quot;Description&quot;, &quot;Website&quot;, and &quot;Callback URL&quot; fields.
For the &quot;Callback URL&quot; field, it should be {forumurl}/twitterlogin/auth_callback (e.g. https://yourdomain.com/yourforum/twi.../auth_callback )

Check App Settings Go to the application settings (e.g. https://apps.twitter.com/app/12345/settings where 12345 references the app created in 2)
and check &quot;Allow this application to be used to Sign in with Twitter&quot;
In your AdminCP go to Settings -&gt; Options -&gt; Third party Login Options
Enable Twitter Login
Enter in your Consumer Key (API KEY) and Consumer Secret (API Secret) values obtained from Twitter.
See http://tracker.vbulletin.com/browse/VBV-18253 for more information. A more in-depth guide is in development and will be available soon.

CSS Gradient Backgrounds
Continuing our effort to allow easier style customizations, we have replaced the image based gradients in vBulletin 5 with CSS Gradients. This is controlled by existing Style Variable. Gradients are an extension of the Background Style Variables. Gradients can be combined with background colors and images to create unique effects and can be applied to any element. Users can choose the type of gradient (e.g. linear, radial), the direction of the gradient, plus two colors (start and end). More advanced gradients can be created using your style's additional CSS template. To learn about CSS Gradients please visit https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/..._CSS_gradients.

The new options on Background Style Variables are:Gradient Type: Linear, Radial, Repeating Linear Gradient, and Repeating Radial Gradient
Gradient Direction: To Top, To Top Right, To Right, To Bottom Right, To Bottom, To Bottom Left, To Left, and To Top Left,
Gradient Start Color: Uses the standard color palette tool. Accepts the same color values as any color field with the Style Variable system.
Gradient End Color: Uses the standard color palette tool. Accepts the same color values as any color field with the Style Variable system.
Post Moderation
Post Moderation Permissions have been updated. The logic for &quot;Require Moderation for Posts&quot; was backward and caused issues with inheritance. This has been updated. The permission is now labeled &quot;Skip Moderation for Posts&quot;. The value would be Yes for those who should be able to post directly and No for those you want to moderate. The duplicate permission of &quot;Follow Channel Moderation Rules&quot; has been removed from the system. These changes bring this permission in line with inheritance and enforce that a Yes overrides a No when a user is in multiple usergroups. If you moderate user posts, please review these permissions after the upgrade.

Search Results
A number of items could appear in search results that shouldn't. These include private messages and visitor messages. While users only see the items they have permission to see, this is confusing. Often these linked to the wrong location as well. This has been resolved and these items should not show up in search results. In addition, Media Albums should properly link to the user's profile instead of the /special/albums channel.

Removed Files
A number of unused image files have been removed from the download package. You can find the list here: http://tracker.vbulletin.com/browse/VBV-18206

vBulletin Mobile Suite 1.19 Released.

vBulletin Mobile Suite 1.19 is now available to all customers. The following issues and improvements have been resolved for the apps. You can build the new versions in the Mobile Publisher in your Member's Area.

Apps paired with vBulletin 5 installations will now support the display of Post Comments in content.

vBulletin 5.4.0 Connect is now available.

vBulletin 5.4.0 Connect is available to download for all licensed customers. vBulletin Cloud customers will receive an email notification when their site is scheduled to be upgraded.

Sprite-Based Images.
The sprite for most icons used in a vBulletin Style has been converted to the SVG Image Format and stored as a template in the Style System.
Advantages of SVGVector Images - They should work equally well at different screen sizes without the need for multiple image files.
As a vBulletin Administrator, you can change the colors of the icons to match your Style using Style Variables.
Each image has a unique CSS ID to enable customization.
Since the SVG image format is XML, you can update them with any compatible SVG Editor..
Better handling of LTR and RTL icons.

New Templates
The SVG image sprites are stored in new templates. These templates are found within the Sprite Image template group. Additionally, a new CSS template has been added to hold customizations to the Sprite Image. It is called css_icon_sprite.css. It will be blank in newly created styles without a parent.

New Style Variables
There are a total of 25 new Style Variables added to the system. These control the SVG Colors and are named after the color they represent in the default sprite. You can see these variables in &quot;Icon Colors&quot; variable group. When testing the changes to the colors of your sprite, you can load it by pointing your browser to:

Note: Code Cannot Be Viewed on the Portal

XX would be the ID of your style. The style ID can be viewed by hovering over the style name in the Style Manager. It will be shown in the status bar of your browser. Since colors are controlled by CSS, a hard refresh in the browser will be needed to view them.

Style Sharing for vBulletin Cloud
Styles with changes to the style variables and text-only templates can be imported into Cloud account once they are running vBulletin 5.4.0.

Style Variable Group Export
When editing style variables, you can export a style variable group as a Style XML file. These can then be merged into other styles by importing the XML file. This functionality was added to allow the sharing of customizations to the SVG colors, buttons, modules, toolbars, etc...

Tabbed Navigation
The way vBulletin chooses which tab to highlight is based on the URL used by the page. In previous versions, this only handled a few distinct URLs. Previously, tab highlighting didn't work on custom pages or &quot;sub-pages&quot; all the time. There can also be problems if you change the default page of your vBulletin Site.

The system has been updated to handle these issues. Now the system allows you to highlight tabs and their sub-navigation on custom pages. To do this, the URL of your pages should match these formats: /custompage - highlights the tab assigned to this URL. The appropriate sub-navigation will appear as well.
/custompage/subpage - looks for a tab assigned to this URL. If one is not found, the system will highlight the tab assigned to the parent &quot;/custompage.&quot; If one is found, it will highlight the tab and show the appropriate sub-navigation.

The navigation system will also look for tabs that point to links external to your vBulletin installation. These tabs cannot have visible sub-navigation.

Google reCAPTCHA
Google has announced that reCAPTCHA version 1 will be shut down on March 31, 2018. We encourage people who are still using it to upgrade to reCAPTCHA version 2 (https://www.google.com/reCAPTCHA/intro/) as soon as possible. reCAPTCHA version 1 will be removed from vBulletin starting in the 5.4.0 release.

Group Channel Permissions
Most Usergroup Permissions for Group Channels have been removed. These permission fields were in place for special handling and were carried over from vBulletin 4.X. Unfortunately, they allowed inappropriate behavior to be possible. These permissions will be handled by Channel Permissions. This change will provide consistent behavior with all channel types. Please review your Channel Permissions after upgrading your site. You can view Channel Permissions in the AdminCP under Channel Management -&gt; Channel Permissions.

Only two permissions remain under Usergroup -&gt; Usergroup Permissions. These are &quot;Can View Groups&quot; and &quot;Can create new discussions in Groups.&quot;

Other IssuesPagination has been fixed in blogs and notifications.
The photo tab in Forums and the Profile Media tab should have proper pagination again.
An option to turn off Facebook OpenGraph tags has been added to the system.
Post Edit History now works on PHP 7+
All resolved issues can be found here (http://tracker.vbulletin.com/secure/...&amp;version=11689)

Unused Tables
The following tables will be deleted from your database during the upgrade to 5.4.0:action
apipost
block
blockconfig
blocktype
blog_userread
contentread
dbquery

vBulletin 5.4.0 Alpha 1 is now available.

vBulletin 5.4.0 Alpha 1 is now available for all licensed customers. This is a pre-release version for testing and evaluation purposes.

Sprite-Based Images.
The sprite for most icons used in a vBulletin Style has been converted to the SVG Image Format and stored as a template in the Style System.
Advantages of SVGVector Images - They should work equally well at different screen sizes without the need for multiple image files.
As a vBulletin Administrator, you can change the colors of the icons to match your Style using Style Variables.
Each image has a unique CSS ID to enable customization.
Since the SVG image format is XML, you can update them with any compatible SVG Editor..
Better handling of LTR and RTL icons.

New Templates
The SVG image sprites are stored in new templates. These templates are found within the Sprite Image template group. Additionally, a new CSS template has been added to hold customizations to the Sprite Image. It is called css_icon_sprite.css. It will be blank in newly created styles without a parent.

New Style Variables
There are a total of 25 new Style Variables added to the system. These control the SVG Colors and are named after the color they represent in the default sprite. You can see these variables in &quot;Icon Colors&quot; variable group. When testing the changes to the colors of your sprite, you can load it by pointing your browser to:

Note: Code Cannot Be Viewed on the Portal

XX would be the ID of your style. The style ID can be viewed by hovering over the style name in the Style Manager. It will be shown in the status bar of your browser. Since colors are controlled by CSS, a hard refresh in the browser will be needed to view them.

Style Sharing for vBulletin Cloud
Styles with changes to the style variables and text-only templates can be imported into Cloud account once they are running vBulletin 5.4.0.

Style Variable Group Export
When editing style variables, you can export a style variable group as a Style XML file. These can then be merged into other styles by importing the XML file. This functionality was added to allow the sharing of customizations to the SVG colors, buttons, modules, toolbars, etc...

Tabbed Navigation
The way vBulletin chooses which tab to highlight is based on the URL used by the page. In previous versions, this only handled a few distinct URLs. Previously, tab highlighting didn't work on custom pages or &quot;sub-pages&quot; all the time. There can also be problems if you change the default page of your vBulletin Site.

The system has been updated to handle these issues. Now the system allows you to highlight tabs and their sub-navigation on custom pages. To do this, the URL of your pages should match these formats: /custompage - highlights the tab assigned to this URL. The appropriate sub-navigation will appear as well.
/custompage/subpage - looks for a tab assigned to this URL. If one is not found, the system will highlight the tab assigned to the parent &quot;/custompage.&quot; If one is found, it will highlight the tab and show the appropriate sub-navigation.

Google reCAPTCHA
Google has announced that reCAPTCHA version 1 will be shut down on March 31, 2018. We encourage people who are still using it to upgrade to reCAPTCHA version 2 (https://www.google.com/reCAPTCHA/intro/) as soon as possible. reCAPTCHA version 1 will be removed from vBulletin starting in the 5.4.0 release.

Group Channel Permissions
Most Usergroup Permissions for Group Channels have been removed. These permission fields were in place for special handling and were carried over from vBulletin 4.X. Unfortunately, they allowed inappropriate behavior to be possible. These permissions will be handled by Channel Permissions. This change will provide consistent behavior with all channel types. Please review your Channel Permissions after upgrading your site. You can view Channel Permissions in the AdminCP under Channel Management -&gt; Channel Permissions.

Other IssuesPagination has been fixed in blogs and notifications.
The photo tab in Forums and the Profile Media tab should have proper pagination again.
An option to turn off Facebook OpenGraph tags has been added to the system.
Post Edit History now works on PHP 7+
All resolved issues can be found here (http://tracker.vbulletin.com/secure/...&amp;version=11689)

Unused Tables
The following tables will be deleted from your database during the upgrade to 5.4.0:action
apipost
block
blockconfig
blocktype
blog_userread
contentread
dbquery

Security Patch Released for vBulletin 5.3.2, 5.3.3, and 5.3.4

Two potential issues have been identified in vBulletin 5.3.2 and higher. The first affects the template rendering functionality and could lead to arbitrary file deletion. The second allows the possibility of remote file inclusion via the legacy routing system on Windows servers. We have applied fixes for these issues. It is recommended that you apply this patch as soon as possible. To do so, download the patch for your version from https://members.vbulletin.com/patches.php and upload the files to your server. Overwrite the existing files with the new ones. If you have not upgraded to 5.3.4 yet, it is recommended that you do a full upgrade to vBulletin 5.3.4 Patch Level 1.

The Security Patch can be downloaded at https://members.vbulletin.com/patches.php